Nixon announces trip to Communist China, July 15, 1971

On this day in 1971, in a nationally televised speech from the Oval Office, President Richard Nixon revealed he would visit Communist China.

The announcement marked a stunning turning point in American-Chinese relations. The relations had been frozen since the Communists won a civil war against the U.S.-backed Nationalist regime of Chiang Kai-shek in 1949.

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Throughout Nixon’s political career, which began with his election to the House in 1946, he remained a vociferous critic of all moves to establish diplomatic relations with Beijing. Over the years, Nixon built his political reputation largely on his unwavering anti-Communist credentials. As a congressman and a senator, he emerged as a major figure in the so-called Red Scare, which triggered massive official investigations into possible Communist subversion in the federal government and other sectors of U.S. society.

By 1971, however, Nixon came to believe that the road to extricating U.S. forces from the Vietnam War ran through Beijing. Prodded by Henry Kissinger, his national security adviser and an advocate of realpolitik, Nixon thought the Chinese leadership would be willing to pressure its North Vietnamese allies into a peace-making bargain with the anti-Communist South, in return for improved relations with the United States and the potential of vastly expanded trade. Moreover, he believed China could serve as a bulwark against the Soviet Union, the United States’ Cold War foe.

Nixon waited until February 1972 to undertake his historic “journey for peace.” The presidential visit, widely covered by the networks, initiated a long and gradual process of normalizing relations between Beijing and Washington. The dramatic opening failed, however, to influence Hanoi’s negotiating stance, and the Vietnam War dragged on for another year.

Source: “Nixon in China, The Week That Changed the World,”by Margaret Macmillan (2006).